In proposed merger with AT&T, T-Mobile customers win

While AT&T customers can clearly see the benefits of a merger with T-Mobile, customers of the company being acquired are having a difficult time seeing what’s in it for them. What will happen to T-Mobile’s current data plan offerings? Will handset releases slow down? How will this effect my monthly bill? The questions are plentiful and, unfortunately, many of them are unanswered at this point. Yet while the questions outnumber the answers, there is one thing I’m pretty certain of: whether this deal goes through or not, T-Mobile customers are going to benefit.

When you look at the AT&T, T-Mobile deal from a very high level, it looks like a disaster for customers of the latter company. AT&T, a carrier with higher plan prices and more money, swallowing up a smaller rival with more competitive rate plans and an impeccable customer service record. The company that was once dissolved into pieces for its market monopoly in 1982, is slowly beginning to put the franchise back together.

It’s only when you start to really dig into the terms of the agreement that you begin to realize what this deal actually means for T-Mobile and its customers. And how, if the deal were to be denied by U.S. regulators or scuttled by AT&T, there is still something in it for T-Mobile consumers. No matter which way the regulatory ball falls, T-Mobile’s customers win.

The terms of the deal are still very liquid, but a preliminary agreement has been announced by both parties. In exchange for $39 billion in cash and stock, AT&T will acquire T-Mobile and, more importantly, its portfolio of spectrum licenses. If approved, AT&T will take most of T-Mobile’s AWS spectrum and repurpose it for its future LTE rollout. A rollout that, if all goes according to plan, will blanket 95% of the population in the continental U.S. with sweet, sweet Long Term Evolution radio waves. AT&T will also assume control of T-Mobile’s network infrastructure, giving the company access to more towers and equipment in locations across the country. The combination of increased spectrum and networking equipment is expected to ease cellular-data bottlenecks that are very familiar to those who frequent major metropolitan areas like New York and San Francisco with AT&T devices. The hordes of T-Mobile customers — all 33.7 million of them — will be folded into AT&T and benefit from these investments and divestments as well.

But what if the deal falls through? What if U.S. regulators squash the deal or AT&T finds the nearly $40 billion premium too hefty? T-Mobile customers, and Deutsche Telekom, will still make out just fine. In a conference call this morning, AT&T announced that if the merger is unsuccessful, it will pay T-Mobile USA $3 billion for its troubles. But it doesn’t stop there. AT&T will transfer to T-Mobile any of its AWS spectrum that is “not critical” to its initial LTE rollout and enter a roaming agreement with the carrier that will give it coverage in areas where T-Mobile does not overlap with AT&T. Again, T-Mobile customers will benefit from more spectrum and more coverage.

The big question that most T-Mobile customers will have — especially those who don’t know or care what “spectrum” is — will be, “will my monthly wireless bill increase?” And those are answers we may not have have until long after the deal is done. In the meantime, what I can tell the T-Mobile faithful is this: whether the deal goes through or not, you will definitely win from a network prospective.

My thoughts exactly. T-Mo customers are now going to be on the hook for more expensive services.

umaboss

are they? or are they going to get grandfathered in on their current plan?

I’m expecting to have my same plan and get expanded coverage. I’m sure they will figure out a way to fuck me when LTE comes around, but until then, bring it on.

Tim

For the time being you will yes, but once your contract is up you will be nudged (forced?) into taking on an AT&T plan. The same thing just happened to customers of Cellular One (a regional Midwest carrier bought out by AT&T a couple years ago). This honestly is the best thing you could see. You could also see what happened to the old ATT Wireless customers when Cingulair bought them and changed their name to ATT (within a year the they were all forced into new more expensive data plans). Fortunately at least you will fare better than the old Unicel customers did when TMo bought them (they were all cut loose completely and then eventually once the deadline to port their numbers out was reached they were offered the option of joining TMo but had to sign up for TMo plans and in many cases had to get new TMo phones to be compatible with their data services),

It’s very unlikely that current TMo customers will be able to keep their plans for perpetuity, at some point your phone will be deemed incompatible with the new services and you will be forced to switching over. And here I was considering signing up for a line on TMo to get the Nexus S … scratch that idea!

cb

Tim,

I’d just like to point a couple of things out, as I deem your response incorrect information. I do believe that I know a little bit about this topic as I was hired under Dobson Cellular One and soon underwent the transition to AT&T. The timeline you offer up is more than a couple of years. These Cellular One stores officially became AT&T stores around the tail end of ’06 / early ’07. To be entirely true, these Cellular One customer were not forced to change their plans at all. It was only until February of this year that customers we sent letters that they needed to activate new AT&T sim cards or face a service interruption. Do the math chief – 5 years!!!! While many of these customers were grumpy that they had to come in to a store to change anything, the fact is that many of these customers were riding plans of a company that hadn’t existed for 5 years – thats unbelievable generous by AT&T in my opinion. I used the analogy with customers all the time that I purchased a couch at Montgomery Wards in about 2001 and that there seems to be a bit of an issue with the fabric, much to my dismay I can’t seem to get any sort of warranty assistance from Montgomery Wards. (YEAH, THATS BECAUSE THEY DON’T EXIST ANYMORE, TOUGH LUCK!!!) In fact, I would estimate that 90% of the Cellular One customers WERE able to retain identical or better plans after the conversion. Many of the remaining 10% had employment discount agreements attached to their plans that were no longer offered. These agreements may have been signed under Cellular One, when these companies no longer even had AT&T service. In addition, many people were paying as if they were a partner line (i.e. getting an illegitimate discount) with no additional lines present on the account. The point is that AT&T handles these transitions better than some other companies. I was around also for the T-Mo Unicell purchase as well. Many of these customer came into my store locations to look at porting to AT&T. Do you want to know how that transition was handled by T-Mo/Unicell? Many longtime customers went to their local Unicell corporate store for service, a purchase, whatever, only to find the doors locked and a sign on the door saying that the store was no longer open and that T-Mo had acquired them. Tough luck. No worries T-mobile customers, if this is any indication, you will not be forced into anything. You will have an inordinate amount of time to figure out how you want to proceed. Things will likely stay the same for you in terms of plan pricing ( if you desire) or you will also have they option of transitioning to an AT&T plan if that works for you better. Either way, you have TIME!

Tim 1 week ago in reply to umaboss
For the time being you will yes, but once your contract is up you will be nudged (forced?) into taking on an AT&T plan. The same thing just happened to customers of Cellular One (a regional Midwest carrier bought out by AT&T a couple years ago). This honestly is the best thing you could see. You could also see what happened to the old ATT Wireless customers when Cingulair bought them and changed their name to ATT (within a year the they were all forced into new more expensive data plans). Fortunately at least you will fare better than the old Unicel customers did when TMo bought them (they were all cut loose completely and then eventually once the deadline to port their numbers out was reached they were offered the option of joining TMo but had to sign up for TMo plans and in many cases had to get new TMo phones to be compatible with their data services),

It’s very unlikely that current TMo customers will be able to keep their plans for perpetuity, at some point your phone will be deemed incompatible with the new services and you will be forced to switching over. And here I was considering signing up for a line on TMo to get the Nexus S … scratch that idea!

Amanda Marie Lang

if you are under a contract you will be grandfathered in. confimred with tmo legal department. best thing to do is get on a contract. its price protection

http://twitter.com/Dodgerblue Dodgerblue

NOT until there contract is up. AT&T will have to honor Tmo’s contracts

complainers

how you all cry…. no one keeps you with any company and there are various companies to choose from . stop being cheap . if you want unlimted talk , txt , and web you got to pay . what do you all watn all that for free or 30 bucks.. god all this b*tching makes me sick. just deal with it people . the company have a right to do business and choose there prices. its your decision to stay or leave and wether or not you have web so you can get on face book and try to hook up with some hot chick or guy .. stop complaining people no once keeps you to what service you have ..

Anonymous

You sound bitter.

Anonymous

Most tmobile customers are just a mcdonalds pay check away from having to get a cricket or boost mobile phone so I guess this will just weed them out.

TheDeathStarShotDownTmobile

Norm, don’t hold that phone so close to your head there pal. It clearly is frying some important hard to replace brain cells that regulate judgement. Most t-mobile customers are the smart ones who avoid paying too much to other companies.

http://twitter.com/Dodgerblue Dodgerblue

well you can stay with your new carrier AT&T or go to more expensive Verizon yes Verizon costs more I had them for 15 years

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_JAFS5ZJ2LZLV3DBFX5L5HNUO7U K

Assumption and a poor one at it Norm. Hopefully my next paycheck I don’t return the cash I earned from serving the country doesn’t find it’s way back into you wallet.

Dan

Hey Norm, I know this will be a difficult task for someone of your caliber, but don’t be such an ignorant jerk. I make $160K a year and I’m happy with T-Mobile. There is nothing wrong with being financially prudent. But then again, I don’t expect you to comprehend that either.

http://twitter.com/Dodgerblue Dodgerblue

Well good for you

Anonymous

Most americans are not like you. My dad makes 200k a year and pays over $250 a month (multiple iphones on the account with unlimited everything). Most americans blow money like crazy.

http://www.darelparkerphoto.com Darel Parker Photography

T-Mobile has better customer service, better prices, and better data coverage than AT&T. What they don’t have is a good marketing team and the iPhone.

http://twitter.com/Dodgerblue Dodgerblue

You couldn’t be more wrong about data coverage. My cousin works for Tmobiles call center and the city we live in has HSPA+. 3/4 of the time he has edge not even 3G. Where I have AT&T and always have 3G and constantly have 4-5 Mbps download speeds. I had Verizon for 15 years back when they were air touch. I can tell you for me AT&T is way better less dropped calls almost none on AT&T and data speeds that blow Verizon away. I also pay around $45 less a month that is with 4 data plans vs 2 on verizon , roll over min that I use, unlimited mobile to any mobile , family maps.

PoopaAnski

That’s exactly why T-Mo isn’t 1st or 2nd. Period.

Jcj1969

iphone is not worth it, it is nice but android is better. Until Apple makes it work on all frequencies it will never be a device T-Mobile customers can fully utilize. As for merger, I don’t know, have my concerns. There is no true win for T-Mobile in it unless it fails. Majority of T-Mobile customers HATE this pending sale to ATT.

Jcj1969

Thank god no iphone, It is a network killer, just look at AT&T. Network data issues since got iphone. T-Mobile, no data issues and no iphone. Iphone aint the best thing since sliced bread. Android is as good and maybe better.

Iringbells100

Ha your funny your a joke kid people like you get smacked around. typical bozo.

Max

I suppose you think that’s funny, but actually T-mobile prepaid is BY FAR the best deal in cell plans.

I am currently paying $30 a month (that includes taxes).

For that price I get 1500 talk minutes, unlimited text and 30M of data.

I use this on my unlocked iPhone. Sure I only get edge speeds, but that’s fine for emergency’s and most of the time I have wifi coverage.

Am I one paycheck away from boost mobile? Hardly, I am just not interest in getting ripped off by AT&T like iphone customers who are victims of that networks pricing…

your mom

is that where your work …Norm

Yeahright

who gives a flying fart?!?! TMobile sucks at customer service anyway. Had them for 5 years before I finally decided they had f’d me enough. NEVER will go back to TMo.

sirpaul

BI-WINNING WIN!

pissedemployee

the loser is the employees if merger goes through and ATT lays a bunch of tmobile employees off.

Tdavis

Yes I am worried about my job as a T-Mobile employee myself.

Dieselblues

I actually wouldn’t worry about your job as a T Mobile person. AT&T’s customer service departments (except the outsourced ones) are all CWA union members. That CWA contract expires Feb 2012, right around the time the deal would be done. T Mobile customer service is actually safer as I can see AT&T leveraging jobs on the CWA side to oust the union from the workplace in favor of a non union environment.

AD

AT&T-Mobile may need those employees, but they will probably not need them at the locations they currently are. Many will have to probably relocate to retain their jobs… Unfortunately this is not an option for a lot of people.

http://twitter.com/chip_mullins Chip Mullins

Don’t worry about it. When Alltel merged to AT&T, no jobs were lost here. They just changed the Alltel stores into AT&T stores.

Anonymous

Problem isn’t so much for corporate stores or back office employee’s, where people are going to get hurt is re-sellers. Most of the mall kiosks I see only sell TMO. I do feel for those people in hard times.

ya think?

wait, alltell was bought by Verizon. lets get facts straight first pls.

http://twitter.com/makhay Bashar Makhay

@yathink… When verizon bought Alltel, select markets had to be divested, leaving at&t to purchase the divested markets.

Tim

In areas where there wasn’t significant overlap yes but in some areas where jobs were redundant yes people were let go.Same thing happened to the Alltel employees who were in areas where VZW acquired.

Anonymous

Alltel merged with Verizon

Scorp

They would most likely pick the best of the best for the 1 company going forward. Just keep working hard and provide good service and you’ll be fine ;)

Anonymous

Your inability to master basic subject-verb agreement tells us exactly why you work for T-Mobile, America’s leading drug dealer/pimp network.

Anonymous

Your mother is a T-Mobile customer!?

Anonymous

Tmobile is great for those with little to no to bad credit. So I guess I see why this is bad during this so called recession. Unfortunately those who aren’t useful aren’t being used. Tmobile just happens to not be so useful it seems.

Anonymous

Actually, his problem is with an agreement between the Subject and Direct Object of the sentence. Which is very much a technicality, since, ‘Loser’ is already being used to describe groups in the article. ‘is’ refers to ‘Loser’ not ‘Employees’. So, who do you work for?

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_JAFS5ZJ2LZLV3DBFX5L5HNUO7U K

That for one is wrong, we all know Verizon operates the largest trap phone network.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_FKYPZOOMGVGRMUT7HC7M6CDPHE David T

A great comment from such a douche bag like you

Anonymous

More to the point, that dress is just merging in all the wrong places.

http://twitter.com/FondelMaJunk Sofonda Cox

Winner winner chicken dinner!

I doubt this gets through the FCC/Justice Dept. It will take a long damn time if it does.

sirpaul

You mean KFC?

joshie

The right people will get bribed. It will go through.

Guest

This deal is going to go through because at&t picked a perfect political environment. The carriers are all having spectrum issues right now and Obama wants everyone to have coverage. By at&t focusing on the fact that this will give them the spectrum to meet 95% coverage, Obama is going to push hard for this deal to go through and ultimately, it will for that reason. In any other political environment, this deal might not work. But it will work right now.

guest

Yes because we all know that the president gets to make all the decisions about everything with no opposition.

Tim

My thoughts exactly. ATT and TMo are acting like this is gonna be happening soon and that they will be able to acquire the entire company/customer base if it does get approved. Neither is likely.. A year is the best possible time-frame but odds are it will take more than that and they will almost certainly be ordered to divest some of the markets just like VZW was in the Alltel deal,

http://www.facebook.com/macdaddybuff Bill Pittser

This is not a win by any means wow…How much is at&t paying you guys??? I always thought there was a big apple slant but this omg.. This is horrid for the consumers does bgr even care about average consumer. This is not good. Whats next Verizon swallow up Sprint and Bgr comes out and says its a win..

Blada

why would he do that?! AT&T pays him for good articles about them, not other carriers

http://www.bgr.com Andrew Munchbach

Care to back up why this isn’t good for T-Mobile customers from a network perspective, Bill? Or was it just easier to accuse us of being paid by AT&T?

numetheus

LOL so if you say something good about Apple, they are paying you. And if you take AT&T’s side, they are paying you. You crack me up. Anyway, this is good for T-Mobile customers. Several here have poor service with T-Mo where AT&T has it good. Cell splitting would give lots of people the coverage they need. It won’t affect your plan. How is it horrid for consumers? Or are you just spouting off what everyone else is saying like a parrot, not having a thought of your own. Mob mentality is the lack of.

http://www.facebook.com/macdaddybuff Bill Pittser

I generally think more options is better. I know people that are on Tmobile for a reason they are cheaper. This will affect people where it hurts the most the pocket book. Maybe you can explain why less options is better when it raises the price of services. I don’t claim to know all the answers but I read a really good article that I agree with mostly. http://phandroid.com/2011/03/20/att-buys-t-mobile-and-why-its-bad/

http://twitter.com/Dodgerblue Dodgerblue

Do you realize Tmo’s parent company stated at the beginning of this year that Tmo had to stand on there own feet. Meaning D telecom didnt want to subsidize them any longer. Maybe they felt they couldnt and thats the reason they sold

Anonymous

Would the older devices be covered by the increased cell-coverage? It seems I’m always hearing conflicting info about which radios are in Tmo phones and whether they would utilize ATT’s cell-towers.

Tim

In a word… NO…. TMo and ATT use different radio frequencies for 3G. The only people who will benefit by this right now are those who are using the older 2G EDGE phones. If you want to take advantage of all of the new found coverage they are talking about and have a smartphone you will have to upgrade at some point and when you do they will nudge (force?) you into a new plan that is compatible with your new phone.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_JAFS5ZJ2LZLV3DBFX5L5HNUO7U K

So just because some people have poor service in your area they should be forced into paying more for their cell phone plans because AT&T is a money hungry? Eventually AT&T would force consumers to adhere to their billing and data usage plan, which is tiered and caped. Currently with T-mobile we have no such cap, to say they won’t is just ignorance, they have a track record of doing things like this in the past, and are currently doing it to their own current customers. For instance, the Cingular merger, the test runs of tier broadband caps. All in all, the loss of a independent provider is bad.

numetheus

Why do you have to pay more? They can’t change your contract term. You will pay exactly the same under AT&T as you are now unless you sign a new contract. Thinking you are forced to pay higher fees is ignorant. There are people that were on the same Alltel plan because they haven’t signed a new contract. It’s called being grandfathered in. Now, if you ever want to get a new phone on subsidy, they may force you into a new AT&T plan. But that’s YOUR choice. Sure the plans are more expensive. But you know what? They also have better coverage and can provide awesome phones. They have dumped more money into their network than tmobile has, and you can see it in the coverage maps. Tmobile is cheap. Cheap prices and therefor a cheap skeleton network. Good riddance tmobile.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_GP2WYAHXS6CRUREISWBGPUSUGE Michael

This doesn’t mean T-mobile customers win.

Some of us are are very loyal t-mobile customers for one reason. The way they treat their Android handsets. Open and the way Android was meant to be.

You have a company that locks down “open source” to the point that it is a variation of the iOS, that bought a company that leaves it as open as Google intended. Locked bootloaders (Motorola) no sideloading applications (any Android on ATT) and 2GB data caps. The smallest in the industry…. doesn’t appeal to those of us that LOVE android for the want android was meant to loved.

That is not a win-win situation. that is a fail/epic fail situation.

god this merger pisses me off more and more by the moment.

Anonymous

Dude, seriously, go fondle your Android device in private. The moment you start to “love” an operating system is the moment you need to change your life significantly.

Tomm

You’re clearly on the wrong blog.

Scorp

So you can only think of the negatives in respect of using an Android device? Seriously? Loving an OS? Come on now. If you look at it like that you can find 10 more people that will say “now we’ll eventually get the iPhone”. So what am I saying? That your personal choice for a device really means nothing in the grand scheme of things.

joshie

“If you look at it like that you can find 10 more people that will say “now we’ll eventually get the iPhone”.”

That would be 10 stupid people then. Too stupid to switch to AT&T if the iPhone was really what they wanted. When the merger is complete, T-Mobile will not be T-Mobile, it will be AT&T. T-Mobile customers aren’t getting the iPhone, they’re becoming AT&T customers.

BTW, people say they “love” all kinds of things. Movies, singers, chocolate, cheese, shoes…is loving a phone OS really that out there?

Anonymous

Having less competition is never a good thing.

Scorp

Yeah that’s true if there was only 1 competitor left. But there are still plenty of competitors. Between Sprint and VZW, the smaller ones like Metro and regional carriers, there is still plenty of options. Now if there were only 2 companies left then that’s different.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=22905524 Anonymous

This is so true. Less competition means less innovation and higher prices.

http://twitter.com/robbie_deezle rob boggan

All in all I would hope that At&t doesn’t squander this huge opportunity they have. this is a chance for them to revamp everything(namely their extra crappy customer service, and questionable network) and really live the good ole Texas mantra that bigger is better. Unfortunately Corporate greed and At&t’s track record says other wise.

Jbutler85

Listening to an article talking about how much a T-Mobile custoemr is going to benefit from the addition of pieces of AT&T’s Network is pretty humorous. AT&T’s network is certainly not one of the companies strengths.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1001483324 Gerry Quaglia

More importantly, what’s going to happen to the Tmobile girl.

Scorp

I was thinking if there were going to be anymore Katherine Zeta Jones commercials. Much rather look at her than Luke Wilson.

OldPro

Wins for T-Mobile customers???

“AT&T will take most of T-Mobile’s AWS spectrum and repurpose it for its future LTE rollout.”
Translation: Not only will your existing 3G phones continue to not get 3G services other than in large metro areas, you will lose that capability there as well

“The combination of increased spectrum and networking equipment is expected to ease cellular-data bottlenecks that are very familiar to those who frequent major metropolitan areas like New York and San Francisco with AT&T devices.”
Translation: T-Mobile users will now “share the pain” experienced by current AT&T customers suffering from iPhone overload of their network.

Haha

Anyone is delusional if they think this is a “win-win”.

http://twitter.com/brucery Bruce Ryan

This article is a joke.

mo

the analysis above is just false! what we need is an open network that is fairly priced. how does a closed and high priced network gobbling up a reasonably open and fairly priced network a good proposition?

t-mobile has the nexus 1 & S. AT&T actually crippled anrdoid phones! if this takeover goes through, we will never see the next paradigm shift that we think this mobile revolution is supposed to promise.

the ability to plug any device and communicate is the future. with AT&T and VZ, we will never see this future as they will cripple us with 2GB data plans (sic) & activation for very device we connect.

is the writer so young to not realize the internet revolution happened because of the low barrier to the cost of entry into the revolution?

please do not shill for corporate interests as this article blatantly does so curry favor with AT&T and the other parasites. thank you for selling out.

Rich

I’d respectfully disagree with the premise that customers will win with this deal. With the logic that having more towers and faster propagation of LTE etc. is better for consumers we should just let AT&T have everything. AT&T’s monopoly was broken up for a reason and they’ve been rebuilding it ever since. In the long run the consumer loses due to lack of competition, the country loses when jobs are lost and the only winners are the shareholders.

rvj

Great article, Andrew. Thanks for the good read.

rvj

Hit post a little soon. I can see how this is a win for T-Mobile customers, makes me feel a little better about the merger.

Me

Who gets the T-Mobile girl in the deal? She should be worth a premium!

LOLCAT

We are all fucked. When Monopolies or duopolies exist, consumers lose. Why is the government so in the pockets of corporations and not the people?

Scorp

The deal hasn’t even been approved yet. There’s also a good chance AT&T will have to sell of some of the spectrum like VZW did it’s Alltell acquisition.

Anonymous

I dont want to lose my $14.99 unlimited data plan

Tim

Consider it gone within 2 years at the absolute best. Before then if you actually are gonna want a new phone post merger.

Juwaack68

Initially, I see this acquisition as a ‘lose’ for T-Mobile, but purely from a cost/customer service perspective.

Higher priced, capped data plans (especially for international data plans) are the first thing I think of about this.

Ok, so there will be more of and a potentially faster network for T-Mobile customers (which would be a ‘win’), having to pay more for it is not desirable (at least to me).

However, until all the T’s are crossed and I’s dotted, what really shakes out of this is anyone’s guess.

Blada

the more i read this site, i realize its a joke. ive been reading BGR for years and lately its painfully obivous they are on the AT&T payroll, especially with that verizon iphone release. I have a feeling this bias “reporting” will get worse. They are sneaky and cover up advertisements as “articles.” AT&T is smart, the moment they do something shady and against the public good, they get BGR to make an “article” about it.

It is so clear to me that this move by AT&T is unfavorable to the consumer, especially because they went out and paid BGR to promote it.

There is a pattern forming, every time BGR writes a favorable article about one of AT&T’s moves, its because AT&T knows they are being shady. Its a valid conspiracy theory.

Anonymous

You have point there… I have been looking at past articles.

http://twitter.com/mbcls ask me

it’ a WINNING for att customers too! i have been to places where there’ no att signals, only tmobile signals pop up! i’m unable to connect to tmobile cus att wont allow it! after the merger, i’m should be able to connect to tmobile towers! NICE!
also we get the the girl too! the tmobile girl! haha

Wobbly

So increased spectrum/capacity and coverage makes this a win for Tmo? I think it’s more of a boon to AT&T, since they catch more grief for those issues. Furthermore, Tmo subscribers are probably happy with their coverage, or else they wouldn’t be Tmo subscribers.

Even if you see the combined networks as a plus, it comes at the cost of consumer choice. Tmo’s competitive pricing will be gone, that much is obvious. The real question is how the transition will take place.

AT&T will have to honor Tmo’s existing consumer contracts, and they’ll be stuck with those for 2 years after the merger is complete. So how are they going to roll out LTE on spectrum they have to use for Tmo’s legacy HSPA+ customers? Will Tmo begin selling tri-band HSPA+ devices compatible with AT&T’s network? That’s not likely to happen before the merger is final.

http://twitter.com/Osopolar24 Luis-Enrique Cornejo

If the deal gets aproved, will Android phones be able to sideload apps?